I think anything with some NPCs mixed in with the players would be something useful. Or NPCs in Ilum to help you control nodes.

awesome, did not know that. thanks.

This is of course true with all games, and not something that the designer should try to stop. The point is that the success of the design is a function of how many people choose to use the internet for help verse how many try it themselves. Certainly not every game or feature has the same cheat ratio. I myself try to look up hints as rarely as possible in gaming, but gave up for the majority of datacrons. It is my belief, though others may disagree, that the cheat ratio is very high with this particular feature.

I prefer to play with two hands on the keyboard as much as possible, less painful then handling a mouse. So AOE casting is my bane. A very simple solution would be to provide two icons for each AOE ability. One that clicks on the ground, the other that centers on the selected target. I think even people who use a mouse may enjoy this as its quicker to cast. Also a hot key for loot all nearby corpses would be peaches.

Datacrons were a good idea, with a failed implementation. I say it failed because it is clear almost every single player who bothers with them "cheats" by looking at videos and such instead of trying to figure out how to get them on their own. Since no one is deriving any fun out of the system it was wasted effort. Assuming there is some new planet in a future release, and assuming you populate that planet with some datacrons, here are some thoughts on how to better implement it. For the most part the idea is to make them a easy enough so that players will at least try before cheating, but still challenging enough to make it fun. 1. First, the best datacron imo 2. Make the locations obvious. You should be able to see them from places you would go normally (only true for about half of them). In fact they should get highlighted on the map. The challenge should not be in figuring out if there even is a datacron nearby, but how to get to it once found. I have to believe atleast some of the current locations were leaked by developers rather than honestly found. 3. DO NOT use slow moving objects such as cranes, lifts etc. By all means, use moving objects, but please make them fast moving objects. Believe it or not I do have better things to do than to stand around for 40 minutes waiting for a balloon. And god forbid someone misses the jump on a slow moving object and has to start again. Its not a good way to make players like you. 4. DO NOT place the start point half a map away from the datacron. To attempt them myself I have to wonder if every broken beam I happen across may be the start point to some treasure, and there are just too many broken beams in this war torn galaxy to make me willing to search them all. 5. Throw in some hints. Speaking to your companion when near a datacron could yield some suggestion, though you probably dont have the tech for that. Maybe in the dialog of some quest giving NPC, though it would probably have to be a mainline quest for anyone to actually pay attention. 6. Technically challenging maneuvers are fine, but have some pity and place them at the beginning of the puzzle and not the end (see slow moving objects above) 7. Play a game of zelda for inspiration. It has after all been making games around this concept for 25 years.

Is there anything in this game that makes companions relevant end game? There does not seem to be. Crew skill create an artificial dependency on companions but that has nothing to with combat. Open pvp seems a natural option but they cant be used in Ilum. Here are some possibilities: 1. Open PVP a) ops with companions, maybe allow them on one world but not others to create a different feel to the TBA next world pvp zone b) a zone designed for open pvp with no ops (not just ganking questers) to create a smaller scale pvp atmosphere 2. A quest series that uses highly technical battles requiring precise use of character + companion skills. Think hunter series in WoW classic. a) To build on this, create party encounters that rely on those same skills. This may require allowing some zones to allow companions in party.

Are there any plans to make companions relevant end game. The crew skill connection is artificial. Anything related to combat?

This whole post reeks of intellectual compromise in the name of self interest. If bio needs to inflate the monetary base in order to aid the economy in can do so by increasing cash awards across the board rather than rewarding an arbitrary subset of the population. Oh I can hear you scream pinko. Im not talking about checks in the mail here. As for your treatise on real world economics. You must first realise two things 1. There are no entrepreneurs in this game. Entrepreneurs are rewarded for risk. There is very little in this game. Yes missions can fail but with very specific probabilities. There is little product innovation, so your whole analogy to all hail the entrepreneur is wasted. 2. This game is not well represented as a developed economy and never will be. It is a very undeveloped, specialized exporter, bascially a mining colony. All economic activity is dominated by foreign exhange, as the majority of income and expenditures are with non players. Thus policies promoting internal, real economic activity will have limited effect.